Plastic Friendships
One Saturday in the fall at my first college, I was feeling a bit down in the dumps, and a friend of mine turned to me and said “let’s go to Brattleboro and get some crispy tofu,” and we did, three of us in her big purple Subaru. It turns out that Brattleboro happened to have a very good Vietnamese restaurant at the time (and maybe they still do), and the tradition of going out for crispy tofu when feeling blue had begun several semesters before.
So we ate our crispy tofu and spring rolls, and then we wondered around Brattleboro in the warmth of early fall, going to bookstores and the Brattleboro Food Co-op, and then one friend remembered that she actually needed something from the outdoor store, so we went there, and while we were there, I purchased a Nalgene bottle.
This may not seem like a big event in a person’s life, I mean lots of people have water bottles and a fair number of those water bottles are Nalgene bottles, but Nalgene had just come out with the line of brightly colored ones, as I recall, and it was a topic of much debate, which color I should get, and then someone else got one too. I also got a tin of Burt’s Bees Chapstick, as I recall, and even now, the smell of Burt’s Bees transports me back to Vermont in the winter, with snow and cracking lips and long silences.
I’ve been using that bottle ever since.
I missed the bottled water craze because of my Nalgene. Why buy bottled water when I already had a bottle of perfectly palatable water, ready to hand? I never got the point of bottled water, and was kind of surprised when it became hip and trendy.
The printed volume measurements on the side wore off long ago, and at one point the cap became so damaged that it couldn’t close anymore, so I was forced to replace it. On the side of the water bottle, I typed a helpful typewritten reminder: If love is free, why so sad? The tape has endured through years of use and multiple dishwashings, as has the paper itself. I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t disintegrated, thanks to the humidity.
I’ve taken my Nalgene camping in all sorts of strange places. I’ve accidentally left it clipped to my pack and watched my bag skid across 150 feet of tarmac at an airport after being misthrown, leaving one small scratch on the bottle. It’s been carried on hikes, refilled from mountain streams, frozen, and run through a garbage disposal by accident (there’s a small scratch on the bottom).
When I had real jobs where I went to work somewhere, my Nalgene always came with me, and people could tell when I was working because they would see it perched on the counter, or near my workstation. I drank from it in nervous, sudden gulps when I was stressed out or upset, I used it as a handy gauge to see how much water I drank a day, I threw it at someone in a fit of rage one when I was breaking up with him and split his eyebrow on it.
My Nalgene and I have been through the wringer. That water bottle has more frequent flier miles than most people I know, and it’s been present through thick and thin. It might seem silly to think of having such an intense and personal relationship with an object, but there it is. That bottle has been a part of my life for so long that I’ve forgotten what it would be like to live without it.
Looking at my Nalgene reminds me of so many events, places, people, and relationships. There’s a lot of memory packed into that humble water bottle, and sometimes it’s almost too much to bear. I’m sometimes reminded of the scene in Stranger in a Strange Land where Michael looks down at a city and sees it as “so choked with living experience.” I have always suspected that places and some objects can become almost overloaded with memories and experiences, personally.
I think it’s safe to say that my Nalgene is one of my oldest friends, and that’s why I was sad to learn that the plastic it is made from is apparently toxic. People have had their suspicions about BPA for years, but I guess it’s official now. The Canadian government even says ixnay on the pabnay. Nalgene has stopped making bottles with BPA, mainly in response to consumer concerns, I suspect, and some stores have pulled products which contain it.
I suppose I should retire my Nalgene, given this information, but I can’t bring myself to do it. After all, I live a block away from a hazardous waste dump, and I lived on a hazardous materials site for almost a year. Lots of things around me are probably cancerous, including a number of former friendships. So I’m just not ready to drain my Nalgene and recycle it. It seems so cold and callous to dump my old friend like that, just because of the latest health scare, the latest political trend in the health conscious community. Maybe I will be ready, someday, but for now I know that it will always be there in the fridge waiting for me, filled with cold water, and I like something fixed and dependable in my life.